Shahrazád's Ghosts


Chapter 30: Peter (Edward) Part IX


2416 A.D.


What will we do when the world it is ending

And time it is halted for friend and for foe?

Try to hold on to the time as it passes

I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.

The Longest Johns, "Ashes"

ooooo

The sun had set by the time they reached the main entrance to Neverland. Beneath a boulder so heavy that only a vampire could lift it, a large metal grating covered a tunnel. This tunnel led deeper and deeper into the heart of the earth where the air grew ever cooler and danker the farther down the tunnel crept. Finally, when all hints of sunlight extinguished into darkness behind them, a set of thick, metal doors and an electronic security panel were guarded by cameras. This was the main entrance to Darling's kingdom and the one all the Lost Boys used when they travelled to do their mistress' bidding.

There were other entrances scattered throughout the expanse of Overland that made up Neverland's roof, and Peter knew of some of them, but even he didn't know how many there were. While Darling had entrusted him with some of her secrets, there were enough mysteries that remained to bury all Neverland twice over, and these she kept to herself as diligently as she did the secret of cloning.

It had been a silent, somber drive through the desert and into the artificial oases surrounding the fringes of Garden City. Darling would never be known for her verbosity, and she had used her day's allotment of words at the grave of her former companion (if Badiyah could even be called that). That visit to the old mountain cave only reminded Peter that Darling, herself, was as full of secret entrances and dark, forgotten tunnels as her kingdom and no matter how many times he thought he had finally penetrated the innermost layer, there was still another, even deeper, even more tightly hidden and harshly guarded, that he knew absolutely nothing about.

However, Peter knew better than to pry or plead for information from the reticent Lady. When she wanted to give him entry into her inner sanctums, she would open the doors for him herself. Until then, he would only be banging his head against a rock wall with no profit to anyone, least of all himself. So, he sat quietly during the drive to Neverland, admiring again the way the rocks grew out of the desert like magnificent, forgotten temples of their own, complete with towers and arches and carved pillars and the way the sky extended overhead in fathomless pitches of blue. He never tired of the beauty of Overland, especially here.

When they neared the familiar landscape of the outermost layers of Neverland, Peter thought they would park the truck near the main entrance, as they usually did upon arrival. Then, he noticed something strange. The arched rock which normally marked his entrance into the telepathic range of Neverland had come and gone, and still his mind remained nearly silent. He could hear no hum or buzz of the hive mind below him, despite his proximity to their barracks. There was no sudden tidal wave of thoughts, but only a single voice, staring stolidly at a book and focused entirely and single-mindedly on the page before him.

Aphrodite the daughter of Zeus replied at once,

"Hera, queen of the skies, daughter of mighty Cronus,

tell me what's on your mind. I am eager to do it—

whatever I can do . . . whatever can be done."

Quick with treachery noble Hera answered,

"Give me Love, give me Longing now, the powers

you use to overwhelm all gods and mortal men!

He began to feel a deep unease creep over him and so he slowed the truck down and placed a hand on Darling's arm to get her attention. She sat beside him, as subdued as a pond of water after a storm has passed, and her darkening ochre eyes turned to him in silent question.

"I can only hear John," Peter observed. "I cannot hear any of the others. Were they sent away?"

"No," Darling answered. "You heard Slightly."

It was true. Peter had overheard all of the general's report to their Lady that afternoon when she called him.

"All is well, my Lady," Slightly had told her. "The Sudan plant is running flawlessly. The Pirates are ecstatic to sit in the sun each day, though I warned them not to stay too long or they will roast like plucked pigeons. The Algeria plant is starting preliminary quality tests and should be up and running within a few days. We should be able to catch up on our backlogged orders within two months' time, once we repopulate our blood sample library."

"Good, good," Darling answered. "I will leave their continued supervision under your charge, until after our long-awaited guests arrive. What of Neverland?"

"I spoke with Thomas not an hour ago and they finally managed to get the generator up and running. Electricity has been restored throughout all the damaged wings. Once they finish with clean up and replace the remaining burst pipes, it will be as good as new."

"Are the Braves in good order?"

"Well, the ones not busy with repairs are running drills from sunset to sunrise," Slightly said with a chuckle. "Don't fret, my Lady. Curly and John will make sure we are prepared for our Volturi guests."

Less than five hours had passed since Slightly's call. If all things were as he assured them to be, then Peter should have been able to hear nearly a hundred sets of thoughts meandering through the various halls and tunnels and barracks of Neverland.

He couldn't.

Darling stayed silent for a moment before her pretty lips turned down in a frown. "They are all within. I can feel their lives with my shield. You can't hear their thoughts?"

Peter paused to listen again.

There is the heat of Love,

the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper,

irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad….

"No. I can only hear John and he is reciting 'The Iliad' in his mind and nothing else. He is blocking his thoughts."

She inhaled sharply and placed her hand on the controls of the truck to change the destination. She typed in a coordinate he did not recognize and turned to him, her brow furrowed in unmasked tension. "We cannot enter through the main entrance," she explained.

She bade him to abandon the truck behind an outcropping of boulders and then they ran a circuitous route to a small gorge. Within the shadows cast by the carved walls of the gorge was another hidden door, buried beneath layers of rock and sand. This entrance was not opened with a security code but a key, one which Darling had hidden away on her person. He had never known she carried that key before, despite all his many explorations of said person, but he was not terribly surprised to see her withdraw it from a hidden pocket and place it in the lock.

The sand-encrusted door had to be pushed before it creaked and groaned open. Then, Darling disappeared within the yawning tunnel. One finger emerged long enough to beckon him to follow. He obeyed and found the narrow crawl space hardly broad enough for Darling's petite frame. He had to crawl like a snake and still he barely could make way.

"Sorry, Peter," she whispered back to him. "I made this tunnel for me. I never expected to have anyone else use it."

"It's quite alright. I understand. I'll do the best I can. If it comes to it, I suppose you can remove my arms for a time and pull me the rest of the way up by my beard."

She gave a soft chuckle. "I see you have it all figured out. How, though, can I pull you by your beard and still keep track of your arms? Do you intend to carry them in your mouth like a dog?"

Peter laughed. "True enough. I suppose I cannot keep hold of them very well in that state."

"You may want to keep hold of your arms. They may prove useful, by the time we reach to where we are going."

"I am rather fond of them."

"As am I."

"Well, in that case, I had better master slithering and crawling like an earthworm here."

The rough walls around them were rounded and made of concrete. No ventilation system or lighting was attached. No sensors or video feed monitored this maze of tunnels. Their slow journey led them to five additional doorways, each with a differing set of locks or combinations. Somewhere opened by sets of numbers or letters, others opened with keys, which Darling inexplicably produced from more hidden pockets.

"Where, precisely, does this lead to?" Peter finally asked, after he failed to figure it out for himself.

"Everywhere," was her muffled reply. "I can make my way to any wings of Neverland. These tunnels run even deeper than the Medicine Vaults and go as far as Tinkerbell's House, if needed. I wanted to make sure, in case there was ever a need, I could travel without gaining anyone's notice."

"Very prudent."

She fell silent through another doorway before she ventured to speak again. "It saved my life, Before. If I hadn't used the ventilation shaft to get into the Research Lab where my sire had locked himself away, I would never have been changed. I wanted to make sure… that there was no place in Neverland that I could be locked out of… or in."

Peter couldn't shake out how it unsettled him to think of Darling, then. A lone human woman, breaking into a vampire's feeding frenzy in a desperate attempt to gain immortality.

Ever since the vault containing Darling's human life had been cracked open, she had let little fragments of memories bubble over into her words with increasing ease and regularity. It still surprised him, the times she was willing to share any of her past with him, but he treasured those signs of openness and honesty as much as he cherished each full, easy smile and peal of laughter.

Over the past week, Darling had allowed the hardened, crusty layers of her facade to chip away like the smooth limestone casing on the Great Pyramid of Giza. As it did, Peter saw more and more of the jagged stones beneath. There, in the halls of the old castle and the open highlands, Peter fell in love with Darling all over again… or, actually, he fell in love with her for the first time.

The vampiric mating bond may have instilled in him an artificial intimacy, but it was like spraying a sterile room with the fragrance of a flower over walking through a garden in summer and catching the scent of the blooms in the afternoon sunlight. He had always felt the draw, the magnetism, and his capacity to fall in love with her. For decades, he had thought he did love her, simply because he was made to love her, but she had been right. He had not truly known her, so how could he claim to love her?

Oh, she was hardly the incarnation of the divine, a paragon of moral goodness, or the epitome of virtue. There was no way she could be. She was born fully human, forged of clay and flesh and mortality, and then hardened into rock through the fires of desperate survival and constant danger. Those unimaginable trials pressed upon her from all sides, threatening to crush and melt her. Instead, they transformed her into something new, something so much harder and stronger, and firmer than she had been before, like carbon transformed in the earth's mantle into a diamond. The aftermath created something new, something which nothing but another diamond could scratch or dent or damage.

Most would have melted away in similar fires. Bell, in all her softness and gentleness, could not have made it. That Darling still maintained any capacity for love, for compassion, for justice, showed more of her strength than any amount of surface-level polish or shallow innocence. She could withstand the very fires of the earth's crust and was now harder than any other soul he would meet, and he adored her for that strength more than any of her glittering prisms or crystalline beauty.

He did not deny her darkness, however, he could not love her less for it. However, he hoped that he could refract as much light as he could into her soul so she could finally learn to shine.

No. The Darling who lay on the grass by starlight, flowers strewn throughout her hair, a torn flannel shirt tied around her waist as she hummed a song he had written for her - that was a Darling that only Peter knew.

And only Peter loved.

He did not wish to court the Queen of Neverland, the vampire shield, the Mistress of Barzakh, the guardian of an undead army, the giver of wine and protection. No, he loved his Darling and would follow her to the ends of the Earth and into the heart of Volterra itself, if required.

Now, it meant he would crawl on his belly through a secret tunnel beneath Neverland, watching the soles of Darling's bare feet creep on ahead of him, with no idea of the final destination.

"You act as if you know what has happened," Peter observed.

"I have my suspicions."

"Tell me, then," he asked.

"I believe John wishes to arrange a meeting with me, on his own terms, and so I will answer."

By the vagueness of her answer and the flippancy of her tone, he knew prying would only irritate her, so he bit back his further curiosity. It was not easy.

Her pace slowed and then stopped. He heard her fingers turning another combination lock and the door gave a subtle click.

"Peter," she whispered back to him, not yet moving through the door.

"Yes, Darling?"

"You must promise me something."

He grew wary at what she might possibly ask him to promise and so he made a noncommittal sound of agreement. She continued. "Promise me that you will trust me, even if I am unworthy of your trust."

"I do not understand."

"Trust that I love you, no matter what happens next. No matter what I say or do, know that my heart is yours," she said.

She didn't wait for an answer but continued on through the little door. He followed her through and was surprised to find a much larger, open space, lined with shelves. Darling pushed the shelves away from the door to let them through and then she replaced them in the dust-lined space they had been before, covering up the existence of the door he had never before known existed.

He knew this room. It was his old post in Tiger Lily's Court. This was the storage area where he had kept all her personal affects and musical instruments. It was obviously one of the places in Neverland which had not received any clean up after the chaos two months ago. All the contents of the shelves had toppled over and tossed about by water. It had a dank, musty smell of receded moisture and long disuse.

He had not been in this room, not since Tiger Lily's death, and he reluctantly entered, his mind flooded with memories of the last time he had been here, and all the many days which preceded it. While Darling had used Tiger Lily's Camp as her main meeting hall and throne room for some time, she had entirely neglected repurposing Peter's old post as anything but forgotten storage. The barriers between the Camp and the Court were always kept in place, to much so that Darling had permitted tapestries to cover up the removable walls entirely. Now, it simply appeared a chaotic storeroom encircling a glassy observation room.

Darling flitted back and forth around the room, quickly dismantling cameras and sending instructions and override commands into various consoles. When she was sure the room was safe, she beckoned for him to join her by a video screen. There, she began to tap into the security cameras across Neverland.

The Jolly Roger was entirely deserted, as was the Home Under the Ground. Most of Neverland was as empty as a school on holiday. It was not until she reached the cameras for the Braves' Barracks that they found any semblance of life.

Darling uttered a low curse and zoomed in closer.

Across the floor of the barracks, dozens upon dozens of Braves were scattered in prone heaps and slumped corners, each with eyes glazed and their lips painted red with blood. Not a single movement stirred the fallen army from their stupor. Scattered throughout the hall like broken leaves, were the shattered remnants of black medicine bottles.

"How did they…?," Peter began, in awe at the amount of medicine it would have taken to incapacitate so many Braves at once.

"Someone broke into the Medicine Vault and saw to it that the Braves were given more medicine than they were ever meant to have in their lifetimes."

"Any sign of Curly and Thomas?"

She shrugged. "If you do not hear them, that either means they are in the same state as the Braves or they are dead."

Peter gritted his teeth and listened again.

"Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again," John read.

Still, there was not a single mental voice, other than John. Peter shook his head to indicate he could not hear them.

"You were right. You were always right," Darling said, her eyes not straying from the sight of her incapacitated Braves. "My reliance on medicine to control my army was tenuous at best. I could never buy their loyalty completely. They are a mercenary army. The very weakness which made them amenable to my will has now allowed for my betrayal."

"Who?"

"John, of course," Darling said. "He is the only one still conscious, so you said, so logically it must be him."

"Yes, but what does he want?"

"Skulls and crossbones, does it matter? Perhaps Aro found a way to buy him off. Perhaps it was Augustine. Perhaps it was the Romanians. Perhaps he has instigated a revolt himself to set himself up as king or to drown himself in a barrel. My list of allies and enemies is as interchangeable as the Volturi guards and it doesn't matter who is behind it. It's been done. The Braves will be nearly unmanageable when they wake up and they may prove as dangerous as the Volturi themselves."

"We should leave," Peter said. "It isn't too late. We can still go away, and no one will find us. Please. You cannot face Aro like this… or the Braves. I don't know what John wants, but I don't like it."

He watched her as she warred within herself over what to do next, her eyes flitting between the video feed and his face. Then she stood and began to pace the length and breadth of the room, her hand trailing against the glass wall of the yearling's restraints and her gazing penetrating beyond it, to the rock wall which separated her from Tiger Lily's Camp.

"She would have been 56, this year," Darling commented. "Though, that would have been her years of life. Physically, she would have appeared in her 70's. She would have been a white-haired elder."

Peter followed after her so he could stand behind her and follow her gaze. He knew what she was seeing. Beyond, she was imagining what Tiger Lily would have been like, if she were still there, sleeping on that elaborate bed, the sole companion of her mistress.

"Does it matter?" Darling continued. "Whether years are many or few? Would she have preferred to live for more days? What is it that is so terrible about death? I have avoided it for so long. I wonder, now, whether I would have been better off to not fight against it so hard."

She gave him a smile forged of so much melancholy that his heart sank and his sense of foreboding nearly consumed him. He moved closer so he could embrace her, feel her presence close to his heart, still living, still breathing, though he feared any moment she would disintegrate in his arms like pixie dust.

"I, for one, am grateful you are here," he said. He bent his neck so he could place a kiss on the crown of her head and he wrapped his arms even tighter around her so her back was flush against his chest. He held her there, feeling her chest rise and fall against his. Then, with a sudden movement, she twisted around so she was flush against him, both her hands firmly planted against his cheeks.

"I love you more than life itself," she told him.

Then she pulled his face down to her level so she could rest her forehead against his, each drinking in the scent of the other for a few thick breaths. When she crashed her lips into his, she drank from him as if he were the source of her medicine and she wished to join her army in their escape from reality. Her hands twisted through his hair, untangling his braid, and traveling the length of his back beneath his cloak.

For the last seven days and nights, they had fully consumed and delighted in each other during their rapturous nights of solitary refuge. Yet, the desperation and desire she poured into her embrace was of such a different tenor that it tasted more of fear of loss than affection and it curdled his heart into dread of what she was planning to do next.

This place made it all the worse. He could not help but compare how very similar their positions were to before, during his last days as Tiger Lily's Lieutenant. He had only just made this comparison when he heard the metallic clang of chains. His eyes flew open, but before he could step away, the set of chains was firmly in place around his chest and neck.

Her well-practiced movements had been perfected on newborns, twice as strong and fast as he, their senses and reflexes at the height of their acuteness. By the time his mind registered what she had done, his hands and feet were also captured. With a final flick of her wrists, he was suspended from the ceiling, his arms outstretched, his feet not grasping anything but air.

As if he were a yearling again, about to meet Tiger Lily for the first time.

"What are you doing?" he roared, his eyes wide with anger and betrayal. He struggled in vain, but he knew he could not escape. He was no yearling and this cage was built for stronger vampires than he. She stood on her tip toes so she could softly brush her hand over his chest. She paused so she could place a final kiss on his navel. Then she pulled back and met his furious gaze.

"Hate me, despise me if you will, but I will not let you die for me, you foolish, beautiful Pirate. I need to know you are safe and I need you to live. I will come for you, as soon as I can, and you can tear my head from my shoulders and curse me forever for this, but I cannot help it. They cannot know. Heaven help me, Aro cannot have you. Peter, you are my life, my love, my everything. I cannot live without you and I would rather chain you up myself than risk harm falling on you from them."

With a final, penetrating, soulful glance of her lashed eyes, she turned on her heels, and left him, entirely trapped and unable to follow. There was nothing he could say or do. With the barriers erected and the walls shut out, this room was now soundproof, scent proof, and entirely cut off from the rest of Neverland. The doors locked behind her, ensuring that no one would be able to get in or out without physically removing the layers of vampire-proof doors.

Peter cried out when John's thoughts, also, vanished. Her shield was now fully encompassing him and he was, quite literally, in the dark.

Oooooo


At first, he wrestled and wrangled against his bonds, trying in vain to free himself from their barbed, merciless holds. He could hear the sounds of the metal clanking and clinking as he swung himself, but he could not grasp much other than air. Then he began to call out, crying to Darling to come back to him and release him. He begged for her not to face John alone.

Oh, he cursed her, too, but he knew she could not hear. It was he who was the mind reader, and not her and her shield was firmly over him, ensuring he could not hear her thoughts, or any others. When that failed, he finally succumbed to silence and let himself drift between aimless thoughts and memories. When the memories grew too poignant, he decided it was time to sing. He cleared his burning, rasping throat and began the sing each and every song he could remember.

How much time had passed? By the growing thirst gnawing on his throat, he estimated it had been around three days or so since she left him, locked and chained like a prisoner. Did Darling live? What did John want with her? What happened when the Braves woke in their ravenous thirst?

Amidst it all, Darling was completely alone and Peter could do nothing to help her. He could not protect her or even find out if she lived.

If he thought he had felt the sting of the mating bond before, it was nothing compared to the torment he now faced. Their bond, while powerful in its infancy, had splurged into an inferno after its consummation. No longer unrequited, it had seared through him like a furnace, leaving him as changed as tempered steel and he could never go back to being plain iron again. They were bound, body and soul, and the unnatural separation during a time of peril was a cruelty unimaginable to him.

He wondered, at times, whether it would have been preferable to remain in their unrequited ignorance and their uncomfortable dance of avoidance around the magnetic pull. How much easier could he bear this desertion if he had never known the sweetness of her words of adoration? If he had never felt the bare curves of her body against his or tasted her fear on her lips?

He had known the Mistress of Neverland in torn jeans and a flannel shirt, her head thrown back in boisterous laughter, her eyes alight with warmth as sweet as honey, and now those memories bore into him with greater tenacity than the barbed collar around his neck.

The worst of it was knowing he had failed. He had been given one task, one instruction, and he had somehow utterly lost it.

"You have a choice, Peter," the Cullen's seer had told him, that last day before they left. She had sought him out in the garden, whispering instructions to him through her thoughts, so no one else could overhear. "If you choose to go with Darling now, and you stay by Darling's side, she will live. If you leave her, if you stay back, she will die."

The vision that followed was not one that inspired confidence in his heart. It was filled with grey cloaks and beheaded Braves and purple smoke over Volterra. There were chains and prison cells and there was Darling in Volterra.

In her carefully chosen words and even more carefully edited visions, Peter noted that the seer only mentioned a prediction of Darling's survival. His own fate was carefully omitted.

The seer had clearly told him to stay by Darling's side – and he had tried, he had truly tried. Now, if harm came to her, he could only blame himself. How had he fallen for the same trick, again? How had she dared to so betray him and cross his trust in her, again?

He wished then, for a moment, that he had not accompanied Darling back to Neverland at all but had stayed behind with the others. If he was to fail, why not fail in comfort? If he was to remain in the dark, entirely unable to stand by her side and face whatever fate befell her, perhaps he would have been better off remaining with the Cullens, with at least some semblance of freedom, of companionship, and the ability to at least change positions and slate his ever-growing thirst. Yet, at the thought of being so geographically separated from her, he also recoiled. At least here, she could return to him quickly, if needed.

It was with a startled burst of revelation that he realized his very captivity was, in itself, assurance of Darling's well-being. He was still shielded. He could hear no other minds around him. This meant one of two things: either the entirety of Neverland had been abandoned and he was the only living mind capable of thoughts left, or Darling was still with him, carefully shielding him. The very silence of his mind was a testimony to her well-being and continued care.

He could not be faulted for believing the latter option over the former or suddenly viewing his captivity in a new light. As long as he believed Darling was still nearby, he could withstand anything.

Oooooo


It was not long after that, though he could only measure time by how much his thirst had grown, that he was roused by the sound of thoughts.

There you are, Petey, cooed the familiar mental voice of John. John was far above Neverland, staring out into the starry expanse of Overland. He waited for something, though Peter could not tell what it was, only that John was preparing to leave. Peter could just make out three other sets of thoughts, but they were so distant, he could not clearly make out their thoughts, other than that they were preparing a helicopter for departure.

I'm leaving for Volterra, friend, he said, much too cheerily for the reality this statement conveyed.

At Peter's startled burst of panic, he could hear John's amusement. She's fine. Don't fret yourself over her. So, this is where she scurried you away. I wondered. I did not believe for a minute that she kicked out of the car in the desert or abandoned you in Scotland. But this? Why, this is a surprise! Strung up like a yearling!

What luck you have, Petey! How long before you go mad from thirst or from being trapped in the dark like that? Do you think of Tiger Lily while you hang there? I would. She was delicious.

John's mind filled his memories of Tiger Lily's last and final breath, the feel of her body thrashing in agony and then growing limp in his arms, her brown eyes going glazed in death. At Peter's answering fury, John gave a dark chuckle and Peter could hear the thirst reverberate through his mind like a boomerang. John quickly submerged it back into his subconscious and forced himself to focus on the present again.

It is too bad, really, that delightful viewing area of your little cage remained closed. It would have been much more fitting, if you could have seen inside. You may not have screamed and writhed like the rest of us when you had your initiation, but I guarantee you would have been as distraught as any pathetic yearling, if you could have seen Darling in Tiger Lily's Camp these last few days. I begin to understand you better now, Petey. Her kiss really is more delicious than any amount of her wine. Pure ambrosia!

Well, since you could not see for yourself, let me be the window, the open door, the source of all illumination in your darkness. I am only too happy to oblige.

Then John's mind began to flood with images that gutted him worse than a spear through the heart. It was Darling, with John. John's mind was even murkier and more fractured than he had remembered. By the faded, frayed edges of his memories, it was difficult to extricate which were memories and which were fantasies.

And yet, the memories were so acute and accurate. John remembered the taste of her skin, the scent of her hair, the way her shoulders dipped when her arms were thrown around his neck, the sound of her voice reverberating through his chest while he embraced her. Had John imagined it all? Had John fully succumbed to madness? Yet, Peter recognized more from John's memories than could be purely imagined.

How does it feel, Petey? How does it feel to see the woman you love in the arms of another? To know she could so easily replace you, not a few hours after declaring her undying devotion to you? Oh, Petey, don't tell me you believed her! Hasn't she told you, she could become the mate of any of us? We are, each of us, entirely interchangeable. How many of us has she called 'Peter,' even when we have another name?

You like that, don't you? I told you, Petey. I told you. You must learn to enjoy the moment more… not that this particular moment has much for you to enjoy in it… but still. I hope it was worth it. The mere handful of days that you tasted our Lady's wine… I wonder, will it taste more like a curse now that it has led to your permanent exile? Or was it enough to tide you over throughout an eternity of privation?

But you always knew that this was how it must end, didn't you? She could never be fully yours. It's maddening, isn't it? Being so close and yet, still, possession, satisfaction, completion - it all eludes you. You experienced a taste and now you will burn with thirst for the rest of your pathetic life.

Know, then, that the wine you experienced for only a few days, I will drink from for centuries. I will be safely ensconced in the arms of the woman you waited so long for, while you rot here with the kingdom she once also claimed to value. She has left you as surely as she has left her kingdom.

I really do have it all, now. All the wine I could ever wish for, from both the woman and the bottle. Here you are, old friend, starved for both.

When the sound of a helicopter approached, filled with the stoic, grim thoughts of Volturi guards, John picked up a bag by his feet and began to walk away.

Farewell, Petey. Till we meet again.

Then it was that the true measure of torment began.

It was the sensory isolation that was worse than torture. More than the lack of food or the harsh manacles or being suspended from the ceiling. The strength of his vampiric form could withstand even so great of privations with very little real disturbance. However, he was completely and utterly unable to know what was happening in the world outside his glass cage. The world sank into silence again and nothing else came to interrupt it.

How long would he have to wait? And just how long would it take before he lost his all faculties to thirst? He had no way to measure time. Nothing changed, nothing happened. He was entirely and completely cut off – to everyone and everything.

It might have been a day; it might have been a century. All he knew was that his Darling was gone, in every sense of the word.

And he discovered an entirely new definition of thirst.

ooooo


Author's notes:

Go ahead, throw stones. I can take it. They say it is the darkest right before dawn… it's not close to dawn yet.

John reads from Homer's The Iliad throughout.